Saturday, October 3, 2015

1/144 Real Grade Astray Red Frame by bandai

So yeah... this happened...

A few years back when I titled this blog I never thought on doing a Gundam, not because I hate them or anything like that, just because there are a gazilion internet sites featuring Gundam Kits and most of them, with better skills than mine, but when I saw the announcement for the RG Red Frame I couldn't help to get exited by it, and, it has no miniskirt, no heels, no hair, it doesn't have the same colors as the other gundams, and the best part, it has a Sword!

For a kit this size, is a highly detailed kit, it amazed me how sharp some details are, on par with Kotobukiya but still not on the level of Hasegawa.
It was very fun to put together, all the pieces fit , sometimes some of them are a little loose, but that's easily fixed with a little superglue or paint to thicken the connection points and that's it, some pieces are extremely fragile due to it's size, but that's understandable but bandai has some extra points because they thought about this and made most of the pieces on a very soft plastic that will accept some bending.

On the articulation it has never been a big selling point for me, but this kit has amazing movement, it can do almost every pose you can imagine, on the negative side, the thigh articulation cant hold the weight very well, I needed to put some masking tape on the feet to maintain the wide stance without the legs spreading even more, I have to note that this might be a rare problem, but, it's a problem on mine.

The biggest problem for me with this kit is the fact that this comes with stickers, and even if bandai is great on doing those, the edges are very visible, bandai should include waterslides or dry transfers with this kit, this is supposed to be an RG or Real Grade, the hole point of this series is to make "the real thing" and the edges of the stickers take you out, also some of those stickers are too big, so you'll have to trim the excess sticker in order to make the fit properly, also stickers make it impossible to weather the kit once they´re applied, the weathering pigments tend to stick on the edges making it look like a dirty toy, instead of a battle used robot.

The sword is great, it comes plated with the exception of the gold parts that comes in an ugly yellowish color, so I painted and detailed those, the rest of the kit is awesome, go buy it, you'll thank me later.

Usually I don't like the kits from bandai, they are more toys than models, and make great compromises in order to add some gimmicks, but this is an excellent rendition of both, it makes almost no visual compromises in order to make RG Red Frame highly posable, this is a kit that would get a high score as a scale model and as an action figure, very few small and easy to fix problems, the biggest one for me, the ugly looking stickers.
8.5/10

Who's the king of red robots?
My money is on Logicoma.

PS I have had for almost a year the MG Red Frame on my backlog, we'll se how they compare and which one is better in the future.